More than 50 health service facilities have sent cost data to the Health
Roundtable for 2013/14 comprising more than $13 billion of cost from
9.3 million patient inpatient, outpatient, and emergency episodes.
Congratulations to our members! Our analysis suggests that overall costs for these facilities are below the National Efficient Price for 2013/14.
The Independent Hospital Pricing Authority (IHPA) sets the National Efficient Price for almost every hospital-based service based on the average costs reported 3 years before, and then applies adjustments for inflation. This serves as a useful benchmark for hospital comparisons, even in states that do not use the National Efficient Price in funding their hospitals.
Our members submitted their cost data for 2013/14 recently, and discussed this at their meeting on 5-6 March. Most hospitals reported lower than expected costs for inpatient activity and emergency activity, but higher than expected costs for subacute and outpatient episodes. Overall, the totals were below the expected national efficient price.
The members highlighted improvements needed in the way costs are allocated to individual episodes, and in the way episodes are coded to improve the accuracy of the costing reports. Participants agreed to move to quarterly submissions of costing data and reporting over the coming 12 months to improve the accuracy and usefulness of the clinical costing system.
Roundtable members: Click here for a comprehensive set of Costing Reports.
Click here for Presentations and materials from the Costing meeting.
For information on joining the Clinical Costing group, please email: chris.o'gorman@healthroundtable.org